Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Although 1984 and Brave New World are hardly the only great dystopian novels of
the 20th century (hi there, Margaret Atwood), George Orwell and Aldous Huxley may
well have shaped most English-language readers’ nightmare visions of the future. So
it makes sense to contrast Orwell’s world of constant war and government thought
control with Huxley’s drug- and entertainment-pacified society. You may have done
just that in a high-school paper, but the folks behind the documentary #KillSwitch
have created a graphic that examines the ways in which each author’s predictions
have come true over the past few years.

Just as the invention of the printing press ushered in the Enlightenment that tore
down the tyrannical walls of the dark ages and that ignited democratic revolutions
throughout the world, the internet currently provides the fuel for the revolutions in
the Middle East, threatens to upend autocratic rule on a global scale, and awakens
sleeping democracies.
But...what would happen if the democratic Internet as we
know it, was instead controlled by a handful of Oligarchs? What if these same people
had the power and authority to shut the Internet down at their whim and discretion?
Film Director Ali Akbarzadeh explores the real possibilities of this nightmare
scenario in the highly anticipated, full length documentary '#killswitch.'